News

Until recently, it was not clear how lightning could start. CWI PhD student Casper Rutjes modelled and simulated the origin of lightning and ionizing radiation from storm clouds and explained the physics of these phenomena. On 15 March he defended his PhD thesis. His results are important for lightning research, high-voltage technology and nuclear medicine models.

Dutch radio telescope LOFAR can observe the creation of lightning flashes at an unprecedented one-metre resolution, which may lead to better lightning protection. The results were published by an international scientific team with RUG, ASTRON, CWI, RU and VUB on 16 February 2018 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

With sadness, we let you know that our colleague Prof. Willem Hundsdorfer passed away on Friday 10 November, at the age of 63. Since 1984 Willem had been affiliated with CWI; first in the Numerical Mathematics department, where he built up an international reputation. Since 2002, he had been part of the Multiscale Dynamics research group, where he shared his expertise for developing simulations of electric discharges that by now are widely recognized.

Ionizing radiation due to lightning shines for much longer than presumed before: up to 10,000 times longer. This was demonstrated for the first time by computer simulations of CWI researchers. Their work was published on 22 October in Geophysical Review Letters.

CWI researcher Enrico Camporeale received a Vidi grant from NWO for his proposal 'Real-time forecasting of killer electrons on satellite orbits' in May 2017. He received the 800,000 euro grant to develop his own innovative line of research and to set up his own research group within five years. Camporeale will develop a technology to forecast space weather events that could harm satellites, power networks and communication systems. This forecast would allow to take countermeasures.

In May 2016 the EU 'SAINT' Innovative Training Network in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme was awarded a 4 Million euro grant. SAINT stands for ‘Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms’. Its 19 partners come from both academia and non-academia, such as NASA, PLASMAT and Airbus.

PhD student Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has made major progress in modelling the early stages of electric discharges as they occur in lightning, high voltage electricity nets and plasma technology. He received a 'cum laude' predicate for his thesis '3D Simulations and Analysis of Pulsed Discharges', which he defended on 12 November 2015 at Eindhoven University of Technology.

Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, won the Student Award of Excellence of the GEC for his talk 'Advances in the three-dimensional simulation of streamer discharges' at the joint meeting of the

For the first time researchers demonstrate how lightning is started: by a combination of hail and high energy particles from space, originating from exploding stars. A cosmic ray produces a shower of electrons.

How is lightning initiated in thunderclouds? This is difficult to answer – how do you measure electric fields inside large, dangerously charged clouds? It was discovered, more or less by coincidence, that cosmic rays provide suitable probes to measure electric fields within thunderclouds. This surprising finding will be published in Physical Review Letters on April 24nd.

In severe thunderstorms electric fields can become so high, that high energy radiation – such as X-rays and gamma rays - can be generated. Even antimatter can be formed. The highly complex interactions between high electric fields and particles in thunderstorms were not well modelled yet. Christoph Köhn, PhD student from research centre Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, modelled and simulated these processes in a new way.

Pulsed electric discharges have important applications, such as purifying polluted air in highway tunnels, disinfection and wound healing. As physical and chemical processes in pulsed discharges occur on a large variety of scales, it is difficult to model them.

In November, Ute Ebert (CWI) received a large STW grant for three research projects on discharges. These projects are about X-rays and gamma radiation from lightning, air purification with discharges for highway tunnels and hospitals, and environmentally friendly high voltage switches for power plants.

With new simulations Alejandro Luque and Ute Ebert (CWI) explained huge lightning flashes above clouds: sprites. They published their results in Nature Geoscience, which appeared online on 25 October 2009.

CWI researcher Willem Hundsdorfer has been appointed part-time professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. As of May 1, 2009, he holds the chair of Numerical Mathematics at the Faculty of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science.

On Tuesday 27 May 2008 TV programme Galileo airs a documentary on the effect of lightning on climate changes. Featuring CWI researcher Ute Ebert and her colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Galileo, 22:50 hrs, Nederland 2. Rerun Saturday 31 May, 9:22 hrs.

Ute Ebert has been invited to become a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen) in Haarlem, the oldest academic society in the Netherlands. Established in 1752, the society aims at promoting science by awarding prizes and stipendia. Nowadays, it aspires to bridge the gap between science and society.

Willem Hundsdorfer has submitted the best mathematical research proposal in the 2003 Open Competition of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). As a result his project receives the Peterich Prize. This was announced by NWO on July 21, 2003. The proposal was selected from a total of sixty submissions.